JP’s license fight at an end?

JP’s Lounge (2412 Wisconsin Ave.) has lost its bid to offer tabletop and alcove dancing, at least for the time being. On October 23, the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board denied the strip club’s application to use the small performance spaces after club spokesman Paul Kadlick failed to appear at a hearing on the matter. Kadlick later wrote to the board apologizing for his absence—which he attributed to unexplained tardiness compounded by a Secret Service road closure—and requesting that the club’s application be reinstated. On November 13, the ABC Board denied that request. But there is nothing stopping JP’s from submitting a new application.

Meanwhile, an effort to question the club’s recent liquor license renewal seems to be at an end. On September 18, the ABC Board dismissed a protest of the license renewal by ANC 3B and the Glover Park Citizens’ Association. Because the groups’ joint protest focused the fitness of the club’s owners for licensure rather than the appropriateness of the club to the neighborhood, the Board ruled it “outside the possible grounds” for protest as outlined in the relevant statute. (The ANC recently used the appropriateness argument to get the club’s opening time changed from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.) On September 30, the two groups filed a joint request to reinstate their protest, arguing that the Board had misunderstood the statute. On October 16, the Board voted to hear oral arguments in the matter, but on October 23, its members reconsidered their decision to reconsider and voted to deny the reinstatement request without hearing oral arguments. “I feel that we don’t need to hear oral arguments,” said Board member Nick Alberti at the meeting. “If the protestants have relevant information about the licensees’ fitness for licensure, then the Board will be interested in hearing that, and we will deal with it appropriately.” The club’s license will come up for renewal again in 2015.

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2 Responses

It is reassuring to see ANC3B and GPC working on this issue. The obvious answer is to press the argument that places like this are inappropriate to the neighborhood. Strip bars are unobjectionable in an appropriate environment, but Glover Park is not that environment. I read somewhere that the strip bars in Glover Park were a hangover from the days when catlemen from up-country drove their herds to the stockyards and slaughter-houses in Glover Park, and that the sleazy bars sprang up to service the drovers. Those days, however, are long over, and the strip bars on Wisconsin Avenue belong in an appropriately designated adult entertainment district, far, far away from Glover Park.

They don’t appear to be doing much business as far as I can see. I am out on the commercial strip several times a week and I have not observed much comings and goings from the place. I hope I am right.